Chapter 34 – What Is Traded for Life
Theme: False ethics, lives being traded, and truths coated in gold.
Dr. Kael, 42 years old. A renowned organ surgeon.
Astral Entity: Syzar — a massive, pulsating heart with human faces screaming across its surface. It feeds on selfish decisions disguised as rationality.
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The Chamber
Inside a private operating room, deep within an elite underground clinic guarded by layers of security.
Beneath the glowing skyscraper, far from the poor patients who lined up nameless and hopeless, there was a sterile, fragrant white room.
In it, a man washed his hands as though in ritual—not for purity, but for forgetting. He was a savior to those who could pay.
And an executioner to those who could not.
In the corner, a 16-year-old boy lay unconscious—too young to die, yet already marked for death that very day.
"His organs are compatible. No family. No ties. One life for three more 'valuable' ones," whispered the voice inside Kael's mind.
He did not know—the voice belonged to Syzar, the entity he had nurtured with his choices for the past seven years.
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The Astral Awakens
When the scalpel touched the boy's skin, blood did not flow.
Instead, the walls of the room pulsed. A deafening thump-thump echoed from every direction.
Syzar emerged: a heart the size of a vault, slick with blood, faces moaning across its flesh—each one belonging to Kael's victims.
"You are not a killer," Syzar hissed.
"You only choose who is more worthy to live. Is that not... divinity?"
Kael trembled. For the first time, he wanted to stop.
But Syzar had already buried its roots deep in his mind.
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Enver Arrives
Enver appeared in the room—not through the door, but from the shadow of a surgical tool.
The 35th card glowed in his hand: a scale with a human heart on one side, a pile of gold coins on the other.
Syzar writhed, recognizing the intruder.
"You are no savior. You are only a purifier. You will never understand rationality!"
Enver's gaze was unshaken.
"I do not choose. I only reveal what you hide."
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The Battle
Syzar unleashed a wave of blood pressure, transforming the chamber into a sea of red.
Each pulse conjured the faces of those Kael had discarded—
a mother whose organs were withheld because she could not pay,
a child put to sleep for transplantation.
The blood sought to drown Enver, twisting his past memories, whispering that justice could never be objective.
But Enver hovered above the tide, forming a blue circle beneath him shaped like an empty heart.
He drew an additional card: The Weightless Life.
"Life cannot be weighed. But the sin of denying its value... will rot."
Light poured from the circle, absorbing the astral blood.
Syzar screamed, trying to fuse itself with Kael to survive.
Enver walked toward the surgeon—half-conscious, half-consumed by the monstrous heart.
He placed his palm upon Kael's chest.
"You are not a demon. But you surrendered your will to a logic that kills.
Let your choice be purified, not justified."
Kael wept—not from repentance, but from the unbearable truth revealed.
Syzar burst apart, dissolving into crimson mist, sealed within a card shaped like a stethoscope that replayed the cries of the forsaken.
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Closing
The boy survived.
The operation was abandoned.
The clinic vanished—not destroyed, but erased as though it had never existed.
Days later, Kael was found in a public hospital, working unpaid as a volunteer.
No one remembered the underground clinic.
But Enver did.
He stared at the 35th card in his hand—now heavier than all the rest.
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